Better than most of the best
Cressida Connolly
CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN by Louis de Bernieres Seeker & Warburg, £14.99, pp. 436 Louis de Bernieres is one of the 20 who appeared in last years notorious list of the Best Young British Novelists (well, young- ish. Most of them were pushing 40, but what passes for extreme youth among writ- ers is positively past it by the standards of, say, mathematical wizardry or sporting abil- ity). His inclusion among the ranks of such fashionable writers as Jeanette Winterson and Will Self is, however, misleading, even though he is certainly one of the most tal- ented young writers I can name. But there is nothing subversive or experimental about him: he tells one hell of a story, and he tells it straight, with only interludes of high comedy to interrupt the flow. By the mea- gre standards of the day, his work is aston- ishingly robust. He is very clever and funny, with an acute and vivid sense of history, and he is capable of moving the reader to tears. He can also be infuriating, but at least his flaws are all of surfeit, and not omission.
Captain Corelli's Mandolin is set on the island of Cephallonia in Greece during and since the last war. Like many a British writ- er before him, de Bernieres has clearly fall- en under the spell of what he describes as 'the little nation that has given Europe its culture, its impetus, its heart'. He might also have said its gift for tragedy. The events chronicled here are as terrible and relentless as any ancient drama. The mira- cle is that he manages to introduce such humour into this dreadful saga.
I should confess that my knowledge of modern Greek history is not just slender, Actually, madam, I don't know how it hap- pened, but you are speaking to someone in authority.' but anorexic. Reading here of wartime British lethargy, of Italian and then Ger- man invasions followed by mayhem, slaughter and atrocity, I very much hoped that he was making it all up. Of course he is not: the central event of this novel is the actual murder of more than 4,000 Italian soldiers by the Germans in Cephallonia.
De Bernieres does not shirk from describ- ing horror, as readers of his previous novels will remember. Rare among contemporary writers, though, his accounts of violence and brutality are never superfluous. He is old fashioned, too, in his values: carnage may be depicted explicitly, but love-scenes are touchingly chaste, with nobody going much further than kissing. He recognises honour and celebrates valour.
The novel is made up not of chapters, but of over 70 episodes, many of which would stand up on their own as little comic vignettes of some charm. There is a hilari- ous scene in which Corelli, one of the occu- pying Italians, tries to win acceptance from the Greeks by learning to say good morn- ing and good evening in their language. His billet is with the local doctor, who duly teaches him to say 'ai gamisou' and patanas gie'. To his surprise and consterna- tion, all the locals thus addressed either spit or turn away. It later emerges that the reason for their rudeness is that the doctor has taught him to say 'go f— yourself' and `son of a whore' to every passerby. Such small but effective acts of defiant patrio- tism typify the Greeks in this novel.
Another brilliantly funny scene concerns the arrival, by parachute, of an undercover British agent on a remote mountain. The illiterate shepherd into whose welcoming hands he falls takes him for an angel, and imagines that he is communicating with God when he speaks into, and is answered by, a metal box. He begins to recognise a few of the words which comprise the heav- enly discourse: 'Roger', 'Charlie' and 'Wilco' are among them.
De Bernieres is a dab hand at such set pieces, but not quite so good at characters.
The people in this novel are all characters with a definite capital C, and none of them deviates one jot from his national traits.
Thus the Italians are drunken, sentimental opera lovers who adore children; the Ger- mans are clipped and formal and duplici- tous; the British jolly good chaps, if a bit eccentric. You always know where you are in this book. The Greeks eat rough bread strewn with oregano and the Italians sing and weep and gesticulate a lot. They are all highly entertaining, but it is difficult to lose the sense that they are being manipulated for the sake of the story.
But what a story it is. The narrative does not slacken once in these 400-odd pages, and what is lost in depth and complexity of personality is more than made up for in action, romance and feats of courage and daring. It's said that all's fair in love and war. Captain Corelli's Mandolin shows that, in fact, nothing is fair in either.
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